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House Votes 293-123 to Cut Funding for NSA Spying on Americans.

posted by janrinok on Friday June 20 2014, @12:54PM   Printer-friendly
from the they-will-find-a-way-around-this dept.

AnonTechie writes:

Whats happening? Why the sudden rush of common sense? Sincerely hope that good sense prevails and continues to move forward.

In a surprising vote late Thursday night, a strong majority of the House of Representatives voted to cut funding to NSA operations that involve warrantless spying on Americans, or involve putting hardware or software "backdoors" into various products. The amendment to a defense appropriations bill was offered by Reps. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), and Thomas Massie (R-KY), passed 293-123.

The amendment ( http://repcloakroom.house.gov/uploadedfiles/massie.pdf ) [PDF] specifies that, with a few exceptions, "none of the funds made available by this Act may be used by an officer or employee of the United States to query a collection of foreign intelligence information acquired under section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (50 U.S.C. 1881a) using a United States person as an identifier."

In addition, "none of the funds made available by this Act may be used by the National Security Agency or the Central Intelligence Agency to mandate or request that a person...alter its product or service to permit the electronic surveillance...of any user of said product or service for said agencies." Since Edward Snowden began leaking documents about the NSA's tactics in June of last year, security experts have worried about reports of intentional weaknesses left in widely-used cryptography specifications.

 
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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by deego on Friday June 20 2014, @02:07PM

    by deego (628) on Friday June 20 2014, @02:07PM (#57977)

    With Obama, Republicans seem to have discovered their love for liberty. All rhetoric aside, opposition to patriot act was *almost all* democrat.
    But, well, that was then!
    What about now?

    Let's look at the current vote. Republicans *still* outnumbered Democrats 3 to 1 in opposing this vote.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by DeathMonkey on Friday June 20 2014, @06:13PM

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Friday June 20 2014, @06:13PM (#58102) Journal

    From the Article:

    The vote for the amendment was bipartisan. Democrats supported it 158 to 29, while Republicans supported it 135 to 94.

    So, 84% of the Democrats vs 59% of the Republicans.

    • (Score: 1) by deego on Friday June 20 2014, @11:19PM

      by deego (628) on Friday June 20 2014, @11:19PM (#58223)

      True, so, as I said, the ratio of the number opposing is 29:95, or even more skewed than 1:3

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 21 2014, @09:47AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 21 2014, @09:47AM (#58352)

    Maybe I'm missing some finer details here. But how is opposing this vote championing liberty? I looked for indicators of sarcasm but didn't see them.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 21 2014, @12:46PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 21 2014, @12:46PM (#58386)

    The only thing Republicans are championing is their love of making Democrats look bad at all costs.